Page 47 of For Real

Not that it matters because I’m still living with Mum anyway. Like the loser I am.

I’ve thought about saying something to Joe, but I’m kind of afraid it’ll backfire. Currently I’m doing everything, which is hard, but it’s still way better than someone else doing all the cooking and me doing all the shitwork. So if I push too hard, I might lose what I’ve got. And I’m not sure I could stand it because it’s already so fucking little.

I’m just…

I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be. Or how I find out.

And it’ll be Easter soon, so I’ll have to see all my mates from school again. I say all as if there’s loads, but there’s some, and they’re kind of totally different now, totally changed. Like life is really happening for them and taking them places, while I’m still here, still the same. Maybe even going backwards, because they’ll all do the university thing and have careers, and I’ll be…I’ll be what? Washing dishes.

I used to be exactly where they are. Except it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be.

Sometimes I kind of fantasise about walking out right in the middle of one of Joe’s rants. It makes me feel awesome for about five seconds, and then I get terrified because I have no fucking clue what comes next. I mean, couldn’t be a lawyer is one thing. Couldn’t keep a shitty job in a shitty caff is epic suck.

So I just get on with things. Every day, I wake up and get on with things, and time ticks on. It’s easier now Laurie’s in the picture. The week lasts forever, but it has this structure now. This reward waiting for me that makes it all worthwhile. Of course, Joe’s regulars take the piss out of me because I’m so starry and ditzy. But I don’t care because it means I get to hang out the serving hatch and talk about my boyfriend.

My boyfriend.

My amazing, sexy boyfriend who is a doctor—no, a consultant actually.

(Who gets on his knees for me, fucks me into a pile of wet tissue, and doesn’t come until I say he can. Though of course I don’t talk about that stuff. Not because I’m ashamed, but because, first off, it’s ours, and second, some of the regulars are pretty old and it might literally kill them.)

I know Laurie gave me all this bullshit about how he wasn’t my boyfriend, but the way I see it: we’ve had sex a bunch of times, talked about deep shit, he actually seems to like me for some weird reason of his own, I’ve cooked him food, stayed over at his place, and I have a standing invitation to go back there. If it walks, talks, and quacks like a boyfriend, it’s a boyfriend, right? And it’s not like he’s ever going to find out what I call him to a bunch of East Enders.

The best times are the afternoons when Joe isn’t breathing down my neck about how worthless I am, the caff is quiet, and I’m doing the next day’s baking. It gives me time to daydream, which probably explains the Great Carrot Cake That Wasn’t, but honestly I just really like baking. It’s a welcome relief to know I’m definitely good at something. I don’t have any hearth-and-home-type memories of it. I think I’m supposed to have been lovingly taught by a doting old person, but I’ve just kind of picked it up as I’ve gone along, and that’s good memories too. Also, there’s Mary Berry who is like the best person ever. I mean, I don’t know her personally or anything, but she’s on TV all the time so it’s like I do.

I have to make simple stuff, otherwise there’s rioting. I tried mille-feuille once, and they came out really well, just like they’re supposed to, but everyone was like, “What the fuck is this French shit?” So it’s cupcakes and Victoria sponge and carrot cake and coffee cake. And the occasional lemon meringue pie. But I’ve promised myself that the next one of those I make will be for Laurie. Oh man, the thoughts I have. Filthy and delicious and probably not compliant with food hygiene standards. I know I’m supposed to be converting him to Team LMP, but God, I’d love to lick lemon curd from his skin while he shakes and gasps and fights and tries not to come.

Ngh. Ridiculously fucking gorgeous man. How did I get so lucky?

If this is my consolation prize for totally ruining my life, I’m pretty fucking consoled.

The other big advantage of Joe’s is that nobody really cares what I’m doing as long as things are clean, there’s food happening, and it tastes good, so I whip up a random batch of red velvet cupcakes. I’m going to take them to the hospice for Granddad and his friends. He’s actually my great-granddad, but since I don’t have any others and it’s kind of a mouthful, I’ve always just called him Granddad. He’s really my favourite person in the world. No offence to Mary Berry.2

And, well, he’s kind of dying. He’s got cancer. All the cancer. But he’s ninety-four. So, if you’re going to get cancer, we reckon that’s probably about the best time to get it. And I know it probably sounds a bit weird to be taking a bunch of bad-for-completely-healthy-people cupcakes to a hospice full of the fragile and terminally ill, but that’s kind of the point. The worst has already happened. They might as well have whatever they like. There’s this whole thing over there about dying as, like, a person, with dignity and love and, y’know, cupcakes.

I remember when we first took Granddad in, I was shit scared it was going to be this hospital place, smelling of disinfectant and dead people. But we’d just got him settled in his room—number nine—when a nurse came in and asked him if he’d like a drink. Just like he was in a hotel or a guest in her house or something. It was kind of the last thing we were expecting, so he wanted to know what they had, and she told him he could have anything.

“I’ll have a sherry, then,” said Granddad, just for a joke.

And they totally got him one. Not his usual type, but they made sure they had that in for him the very next day.

And that was the moment I knew it was going be okay. I mean, no, it’s not going be okay. My granddad is going to die, and that’s going to be really, really sad. And when he’s gone, I’ll be a bit more alone in the world. But it’s going to be okay for him. Because the horrible stuff, the tests, the treatments, the hospitals, the long words and the lack of information, the too-busy doctors and the people who can’t remember his name…that’s over.

And all that’s left for him to do is live. Until he stops.

And eat my cupcakes.

He’s frail these days, really frail. But he seems all right. Sad and in pain sometimes, but all right. They make sure most of his days are good days. And I think his mind isn’t quite… I don’t know. Like he’s still there, he’s still my granddad, but I think he’s losing time a bit. Recent stuff confuses him. Which is probably for the best, because it means I don’t have to explain to him about me and university and all the rest of it.

It means the last things he remembers about me won’t be the ways I’ve failed him.

I’m totally going to tell him about my boyfriend, though. I know he’ll remember that.

He was the first person I came out to. Not the first person who knew I was gay—I guess my mum knew all along—but the first person where the telling mattered. I was kind of accidentally out at school, after the business with my best mate, and some of the kids were shitty to me about it and some of them weren’t and some of them were shitty to me for totally different reasons, because, let’s face it, school is kind of an institutionalised shittiness generator. Like the Stanford prison experiment.

The way I see it, and this is what I tell myself all the time, if you’re bothered, like actually really bothered, that I fall for men, not women, then we’re not going to be friends anyway. So fuck you.

But it’s different when you love someone and their love is the best thing you have.

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